AT&T Data Plus 300MB: $20 for 300MB
AT&T Data Pro 3GB: $30 for 3GB (up from $25)
AT&T Data Pro 5GB: $50 for 5GB, with mobile hotspot / tethering

The lowest tier is $5 higher (33%) but comes with 300MB instead of 200MB (50% more).  The net effect is a reduction in the cost per 100MB from $7.5 to $6.66. If my math is right, that’s about an 11% decline.

The middle tier also rises $5 (20%) but comes with 3GB instead of 2GB (50% more).  So the cost per gigabyte actually dropped $2.50. A net reduction of 20% per GB.At the high end, the rate has actually dropped by $5 from $55 to $50 (see this price chart from PCMag just a few months ago). That’s a 9% decline.

Most of the coverage I have seen mentions the rate increase only in the lower and middle tier. I suspect the reason nobody is commenting on the higher tier in most of the coverage is because it contradicts the “rates are rising” storyline.  Why let facts get in the way of a good article, right?

The price drop for heavier users, and the fact that you are paying less for the equivalent amount of bandwidth, is largely unreported. I guess it just doesn’t fit with the established narrative that telecom companies are out to take more money but not improve service.

I found a number of references to adding international keyboards, but those weren’t doing the trick for my outdated 3GS.

I did, however, discover the trick.  Here’s the easy way to override your dictionary on even the oldest phones.

First, choose Settings -> General -> Keyboard:

Below “International Keyboards,” you will see “Shortcutss”:

Hit “Add New Shortcut”:

Now enter the word you find iPhone continually correcting as both the phrase and the shortcut:

(iPhone changes “hell” to “he’ll”, which I find highly annoying.)

Hit save, and iOS will never correct that word again.

That’s it.  No international keyboards. No hoops.

A la carte for video games! Why should I have to buy the storyline just to get the multiplayer?

Since then, it occurred to me that there is a larger point to be made from that idea.  Everyone agrees that a disk based video game industry is on the way out.  As next generation consoles include more drive capacity, broadband speeds continue to rise; and optical drives fall aside in favor of downloadable content, the idea of a straight download model makes sense.

As delivery changes, the options for sales grow.  Services like OnLive, Steam and the Xbox Live Arcade clearly illustrates that streaming or direct to drive game delivery are models that work.  Given the removal of physical constraints that accompany disks, there is little reason game companies couldn’t provide three versions of a game – multiplayer, storyline, and a combo pack.

If they did, people like me would never buy the storyline again.  I simply don’t find the storyline game all that interesting.  Linear games are boring affairs and open-world can get just as tedious.  Multiplayer is infinitely variable depending on the opposition.  Campers (those cowardly rat bastards) aside, human players make a more interesting game.

If I could buy just the multiplayer for half the cost of the combo pack, I’d buy a lot more games.  My total contribution to the industry wouldn’t drop, but it would be spread out across a wider array of companies.  I suspect a lot of people would do the same.

The possibility of owning a larger library of games I would play (multiplayer) and keeping my drive from being all crudded  up with storyline crap, appeals to me.  I hope the game developers will realize the options available to them and consider breaking up the product.

That said, I’m not about to demand FCC acton to regulate game companies to make that happen.

(Cross posted at Digital Society)

In the early days of the Internet, the newspaper industry made a terrible miscalculation.  Under the belief that the first newspaper available on the Internet would own the space, publishers worked furiously to make content available – largely for free.

The trouble with giving something away for free is it becomes terribly hard to start charging for it later.

Even free evangelists like Mike Masnick understand that you are forced to make money off of things around the free, as opposed to the free product itself.  Masnick often cites musicians as the case study – just accept the fact that you’ll never make money off the music and instead sell concert tickets and t-shirts.

So the newspapers pooched the deal when they went online for free, undercut their own business, and now cannot move to a pay model.

The video content industry would be wise to learn from this, but often seems doomed to repeat the mistakes of both music and newspapers.  More and more programmers are handing their content out for free; and not just the broadcasters who have always been free.  They seem to be operating under the same ridiculous construct that killed news – “this is the future, so we better get on board or be left behind.”

But television isn’t music, nor is it newspaper.  There is an absolute glut of news and music in the world.  Anyone can create either with minimal effort.

Compelling, stimulating, on the edge of your seat video is something altogether different.  Any monkey can pick up a camera and shoot video.  YouTube has proven that. But very few people watch YouTube 160 hours per month. News doesn’t approach that figure and neither does music. Only TV generates that kind of consumption.

Video is different.

Programmers need to figure that out and do it quickly.  Giving away compelling video for free is a recipe for disaster just as it was for news.

Fortunately, programmers have a tool the music and news industries never did – the app store.  Just yesterday Warner Bros made news by releasing Inception and The Dark Knight as apps.

While The Daily is attempting to create an app based news outlet (and charging 50 bucks a month for it), I expect that pilot program will be dead by this time 18 months from now.  There is simply too much news available for free.

For programmers, however, it’s not too late.

Programmers should follow Warner Bros lead and immediately start thinking of ways to protect their content within their own apps.  Why give the content away for free through Hulu, or your own website, when you can do it through an app, and protect the content.

Video delivered via apps (whether desktop or mobile) would allow rights management, and provide a revenue stream, not a revenue hole. Want to watch Lost via your iPad?  There’s an app for that.

The High Cost of Free

The suggestion that content owners move to an app delivered model should scare the bejeezus out of the free radicals like Free Press and Public Knowledge.  They want content to be freely accessible to all.  This model flies in the face of that.

The fact is there is simply no business model in “free” for the video industry.  Broadcasters have come to realize this and are pushing four fold increases in retransmission consent deals so cables paying subscribers can underwrite the free viewing of others.

Everytime you see your cable bill rise, thank “free”.  But that’s an unsustainable model.  More people will get tired of price hikes, and switch to free.  As more people switch to free, and fewer people pay, more content will go away – unable to pay the bills on a declining number of subscribers.

True A La Carte

Moving to an app model should be cheered by anyone who advocates for a la carte.   Under an app model, programmers could make all of the content from a channel available (which would likely be very expensive) or have different apps for different shows.

Buying all of the content from a channel would be the realization of those who pursue a la carte cable.  Alternately, you could buy all the episodes of a show under something like the Kindle model – that is the app is free, and you buy content within it on a per show basis.

But wait, you say, doesn’t iTunes already do that?  Yes, but as GigaOm notes in the article linked above, iTunes movies are available in fewer countries, so apps open up a whole new market for content creators.

Net win for the programmer.

Granted, programmers would need to pull their content from sources like Hulu and Netflix, and invest in the development of proprietary applications, but the cost of that over the long term is significantly less than the cost of going out of business.

Take, for instance, my recent retweet about a Bertolli’s ad campaign.  @LowbrowKate tweeted the following.

Marissa Tomei is WAY to good for this: http://intotheheartofitaly.yahoo.com/

I couldn’t agree more.  I have been a fan of Tomei since My Cousin Vinny.  She’s way to good an actress to be shilling frozen Italian food in webisode format.  But look at the rest of the cast and you will see the star of the short lived MTV Sports – none other than Mr. Dan Cortese.  So I added some commentary on my retweet.

RT @lowbrowkate: Marissa Tomei is WAY to good for this: http://bit.ly/aFCSJF | Dan Cortese makes sense, though. He needs the work.

Well last night I got a reply from Mr. Cortese (which has since been removed).  Here’s the screen grab from Tweetdeck.

I couldn’t help but have some fun with Cortese.  My reply back?

@dancortese1 No offense, dude. You were great in Veronica’s Closet.

Where else but social media can a two-bit political hack and a D-list TV star interact so freely?

God bless the Internet.

(For the record, I had to Google Cortese to find something he was in other than MTV Sports. I don’t recall ever having seen Veronica’s Closet.  He has apparently done more stuff recently.  Frankly I am jealous that he got to travel through Italy with Marisa Tomei.  Back in the early 90s, many a guy I know would have traded a left testicle for that opportunity.  Way to go, Dan!)

It will be sold via the Xbox Live Marketplace for about $15.  They hadn’t given out a release date, but yesterday they said March 3rd.  So don’t call me that day, I’ll be shelling some krauts.

It may be interesting to draw that analogy out a bit further.  It occurs to me that your ISP (and most other companies, frankly) are very much like your significant other.  And on a certain level, that has serious implications for consumer satisfaction.

When you are dating, most of your friends will never hear about how great your bf is on a daily basis.  When he screw ups, however, you’ll tell all your friends.  You’ll tell just about anyone who asks.

That’s actually very similar to your ISP.  Typically, most ISPs have tremendously reliable service. When that service fails – on the voice, video, or data side – you’ll tell everyone.  If the repair guy is late or doesn’t show, you’ll tell everyone you were stood up.  If he tracks mud on the floor, you’ll tell everyone he was a slob.  If it isn’t resolved when he leaves, you will tell everyone he left you unsatisfied.

Since everyone has similar experiences, they’ll commiserate, tell you that guy is just no good for you, you deserve better, it’s just a shame that there are no decent guys is no competition in the ISP marketplace.

A week later when you are browsing freely, cuddled up watching TV, or talking to your mom back home, will you mention that they’re taking care of you today? Will you talk about all the great things they do for you? All the great places they take you?  Probably not.

Most of your friends will eventually grow to think your boyfriend is a big douche who’s always running around and never makes you happy.  How many of them have ever heard you say anything good about your ISP?

The fact is, like relationships, telecom can be messy.  You may not always get what you want.  You may feel you just can’t count on them.  You might think you’re putting a lot of yourself your money into the relationship, and they just take you for granted.

But like relationships, we’ll get through this together.  Let’s just get a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, browse the web, or just settle down to watch Sleepless in Seattle OnDemand.

At dinner Tuesday night, I was discussing those points with a bunch of guys I consider to be very bright technologsts. One of the guys at the table argued the iPad isn’t meant to replace a laptop for business use, it is meant as a consumer device – a user friendly extension of yourself, I suppose. I agreed, explaining that the iPad is useless as a mobile office solution because it is limited in applications to what is web based, or what is available at the app store.

I like using Office, I really don’t like OpenOffice/GoogleDocs. I’ve tried them and found them incredibly wanting. Say what you will about Microsoft, they make a hell of an office product. (Don’t get me started on how inferior Entourage is to Outlook, though. That’s another post in itself.)

But here’s the problem, as I explained to them. The iPad isn’t really a good platform for personal use either.

What do you use a personal device for?

A personal device, especially one expected to become the standard for such devices, needs to have a lot of capability for personal media.

The iPad is clearly based on the assumption that everything is in the cloud. That’s not the case for most users, though. Most users still install applications, download mp3s, play DVDs, etc. With only 16GB on the low end device, the amount of space available for any of that media is minimal. Even at 64GB, the iPad is seriously underpowered for storage compared to a 160GB to 250GB netbook – especially at two or three times the price.

Assuming you want to get everything online, you still have the problem of actually achieving that. Since the iPad doesn’t do Flash, you’re going to have problems with a staggering number of websites, especially if they use it for video delivery. Flash is installed on the overwhelming majority of computers. There is rampant talk of HTML5 replacing it, and many big names are looking at implementations to replace Flash, but there are significant hurdles.

George Ou at Digital Society (of which I am a Director), looked at YouTube’s implementation of HTML5 and found it lacking. In addition, you have the issue of battling codecs that has made adoption by browsers inconsistent.

Assuming the iPad only allows Safari, and since Apple has significant concerns with the lack of patents on the Ogg Theora codec, it’s possible that some site video won’t work even with HTML5.

Absent a reliable streaming solution, and without enough storage space to handle stored media, the iPad falls short on the media front.

What is the iPad’s Value Proposition?

The other problem with the iPad is the fact that it is unlikely to function well as a standalone product. The lack of any type of drive prevents the direct install of applications and requires the iPad be connected to something else. So now you have to shell out the $500 to $700 for the iPad, and you still have to have the $300 netbook, or the $1,000 laptop to connect it to. The iPad was billed by Jobs as an intermediary device with the best features of a smartphone and a laptop. However, since it is far too large to hold up to your ear, and way to underpowered to replace the laptop, you have left neither of those behind, and instead spent $600 for a device that does little the other two don’t.

If you will still need a laptop/computer as well as a phone, there is a serious question as to what the iPad gives you that makes it a unique value.

When the iPod came along, most people were still listening to CDs. The value of the iPod was in a) the storage capacity to keep larger amounts of content with you at any time, b) a menu system that made accessing that content quick and easy. While other mp3 players were in the market, the iPod made digital music easily accessible. The best mp3 available offered significantly less as a value proposition.

Similarly, the iPhone put more power in the phone. The Blackberry was the smartest widely-deployed smartphone available at the time of the iPhone’s release. Yet the iPhone rose quickly to dominance because it gave you more power, more capability, and more storage at a similar price point, and in an easier to use package.

The iPad Has None Of That

A few years ago I helped organize an event at which Marc Andreessen spoke. He had requested a white board for an audience participation event. With almost 800 people in the room, that just wasn’t reasonable. So I arranged with a Dell sales rep the use of their first tablet. We connected it to a projector, and turned Andreessen loose.

Midway through his remarks, he started talking about convergence, and the tendency to take things that work perfectly well on their own, and jam them together. He commented that his first cellphone was a brick – big, bulky, heavy. But he had just gotten to a very small, very lightweight phone, and now here come smartphones to make us carry the brick again.

Then he held up the tablet and said, “A paper tablet is cheap, you can get it wet, you can use it in broad daylight… this thing has none of that!”

And that’s the problem with the iPad. It’s not robust enough to be either a business device or a consumer device. It relies on Apple’s closed architecture, has far too little capacity, and limits your ability to consume the media you want as you choose. Further, it has far greater limitations than a netbook, but at a substantially higher price point.

A netbook has similar battery life, but also allows you to add your own software. A netbook has a larger hard drive, and doesn’t require another more expensive computer to run. A netbook costs half, but does twice, as much. Are they perfect, no. Will they get much better over time, yes. But I would still pit even the worst one against the iPad.

The iPad simply doesn’t offer any value compared to what else is on the market. Cheaper, but more powerful netbooks, or slightly more expensive, but far more capable Macbooks offer much more. Even the iPod Touch and iPhone give you most of the same functionality, but with a smaller screen at half the price. There is simply nothing that differentiates this product. And that’s the fundamental problem with the iPad.

The answer is always incredibly simple. For instance, you can just get Netflix, and watch all those episodes of Entourage on DVD – six months or so after they air. You can go to Hulu and watch programs – except for the fact that the overwhelming majority of cable programs are either a) not on Hulu or b) on Hulu months after they air.

Now there is a point to be made here about why they call it pop “culture” and how there is a societal value to watching shows near the air date so you can engage in the social aspects of entertainment. But I’ll leave that point alone.

The really annoying part of these posts is the authors will invariably talk about the ease of getting cable content, then cite as their examples shows which are not cable programs.

The latest of these is TechCrunch. Now, I’m a geek, so I read TechCrunch a lot. Some of their content I’ll quibble with, but most of it is pretty good. This little item, though, is truly stupid.

John Biggs posits that he has come up with a great process for ditching cable:

I’ve been angling to get rid of my TiVo and cable for some time now and I believe I’ve finally figured out a solution that works best for me. It involves a lots scripting, Sabnzbd, and HandbrakeCLI and I’ll tell you what I ultimately did next week once it’s stable but it seems to be working as well as can be expected for these sorts of hacks.

Sure, John, that’s super easy as long as you’re familiar with Usenet, binary newsreaders, and video transcoders. Super easy!

He goes on to explain that the content he’s pulling in is completely illegal:

It consists of two disparate parts. The first is a shady underground that can offer these shows, stripped of commercials, a few minutes after they’ve aired. How they do it is a topic for another story, but needless to say popular shows are available in less than ten minutes after they air on the Eastern Seaboard. It is a testament to the dedication of a few TV lovers that these shows are available, for free, as they happen.

It’s important to understand that unlike mp3s, television content is not easily ripped and not easily portable. Yes, the shady underground may currently be doing this, but the content owners are chasing it down.

But let’s assume all of this is easy, and the illegality won’t make you squirm, and let’s look at the shows John’s actually talking about here.

What I don’t see in that list is actual, cable content. There is a bunch of stuff from the UK, and a whole lot of broadcast content, but where is the cable content? If it’s that easy to ditch cable (and cable companies should be “skeered”) and given there are literally hundreds of cable channels, and only a few broadcast channels, why is a list of available illegal content skewed so heavily to broadcast.

So from the read of this, John Bigg’s has gone out of his way to come up with a way to steal broadcast content through an incredibly complex process that involves “a shady underground”.

So here’s my suggestion for John. If you want to watch TV as it airs (rather than “immediately after”) then go buy yourself an antenna. They’re lovely inventions that let you watch all the broadcast TV you want, and don’t involve scripting, HandBrake, or SABnzbd. If you want an option to timeshift that programming, invest in a Win-TV-HVR-950Q from Hauppage. It has a built in DVR, and picks up NTSC, ATSC, and clear QAM programming (broadcast, in other words). It’s plug and play, so again, no scripting.

So without further ado, I’ll throw out the 26 questions I’d really like to ask, but would be unlikely to actually answer myself.

1. Have you ever been arrested?
2. Were you guilty or innocent and what were the charges?
3. Will you ever drink that much again?
4. How much do you hate your job?
5. How many times per day do you pray for an earthquake just to break up the boredom?
6. How many times per day to you hope for the sweet release that only death will bring?
7. Where did you lose your virginity?
8. How much did it suck?
9. If you could go back in time and give that person pointers, would you?
10. If you could go back in time and not be such a whore (or manwhore), would you?
11. Speaking of sex, how many kids do you have?
12. How many did you have on purpose?
13. How many times have you wished you had that vasectomy you joked about in college?
14. If you could have any celebrity killed, which would it be?
15. Would you make it painful or quick and easy?
16. Would anyone miss Lindsay Lohan?
17. Have you ever done drugs?
18. Are you still in contact with the person who sold/gave them to you?
19. Can I have their number?
20. Do you like Internet porn?
21. Ya, me either. How many times per day do you look at some just to make sure you still don’t?
22. Really? That’s a lot! You’re very thorough in your “research” aren’t you?
23. How many drinks does it take before you make really bad decisions?
24. Want to go out tonight for drinks?
25. How much time have you spent answering Facebook questionnaires/quizzes in a desperate attempt to regain some semblance of a connection with another human being?
26. How’s that working out for you?

Answer these questions then send this to or tag 20 of your closest friends then prepare for them to be terrified by your answers. Be sure to tag me so I’ll be able to keep track of the implosion of your career for my own twisted pleasure.